I am sure the ultimate wisdom about this whole matter is contained in
those sentences, and I am sure because there are numerous other
departments of life in which similar problems assail both men and
women, and in relation to which the way of self-surrender is the only
possible way to life.

After all, it is not only unmarried women who have to face the
experience of wanting passionately something which they cannot have. In
various forms that challenge comes to most men and women whether
married or not. Our desires demand one thing, and life with its
imperious authority offers something different; and it is perhaps in
that way that most of us come to the crisis of our lives. It is easy to
break oneself against a situation of that sort. It is easy to spoil
life completely by an obstinate concentration on the object that is
being withheld--to lose life by insisting on finding it in one's own
chosen way. Men and women alike make shipwreck of their lives in that
way every year.

But there is another way. Our real life is life in God, and the way
into it is always the way of surrender. To say with utter sincerity and
absence of self-will, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" is to begin
to find deliverance at once. We could not and should not surrender thus
to anybody else. He alone perfectly understands. But when we have put
ourselves into His hands without reserve, immediately life begins to
arrange itself. With such surrender there comes a peace which nothing
else can bring. I say it with acute sympathy for all strong-willed,
high-spirited people, for whom surrender is very difficult. But I say
it with an assurance that is based upon the unanimous verdict of the
souls of all history who have found life. "I have learned," said one